Not so. Look at the i5 750 vs a Phenom II x4 965 BE. The i5 is about $20 more, putting it in the same price class, but outperforms the AMD chip in most gaming benchmarks. (Source)

... And it is more easily overclocked (more room, higher % overclock) for an even larger performance gap.

This, only reason I didnt buy one at the time I bought my, was because i5 weren't on the market, and while the i7-920 was decently priced the motherboards were a complete rip off, and DDR-3 wasnt exactly cheap either, so overall it didnt payed off the price/performance relation.
At this moment, the only situations were I would recomend a AMD are when doing small(cheap) upgrades while already owning a AM2+ board, other then that I dont realy see a reason to pick up any phenom over lets say a i5-750, the performance of the bat is has good or better, and it overclocks so easily it feels like cheating, I do hope buldozer brings a new spirit to AMD though.